Practical Guide
Cutting Down a Tree in Quebec
A forty year old maple in the back yard sells a photograph. It does not push a price up by a percentage I could …
Black ants coming out of the basement door frame in May. The real question is not which product to buy: it is who pays, and within what time you can claim it. Three situations, three clocks: the owner in their own home, the buyer who finds the infestation after the sale, the tenant facing the landlord.
What an inspection report says about an infestation, and what it does not
The standard Quebec building inspectors follow, BNQ 3009-500 version 2022 R1, deals with vermin in two places that look like they contradict each other.
Clause 7.2.3, “Presence of certain signs,” imposes an obligation. The inspector must bring to the client’s attention any sign that could suggest the potential presence of rodents, insects or other vermin liable to damage the building components.
Appendix A then takes the diagnosis back. Its point m) is blunt: the practices described do not allow the presence or absence of that vermin to be determined, because technical expertise is required to settle it. Point n) treats mould the same way, as our piece on mould in a Quebec home explains.
“No insects detected” therefore does not exist in a compliant report, and the report’s silence is not a certificate of absence. The inspector’s working framework is described in our list of what gets checked in a pre-purchase inspection.
Who may legally treat an infestation, and how to verify it
The environment ministry’s guide to the Règlement sur les permis et les certificats pour la vente et l’utilisation des pesticides, the July 2026 version, separates two documents people keep confusing.
The company doing the work for someone else must hold a subcategory C5 permit, “Application en gestion parasitaire”, pest management application. The person who applies the pesticide, or who supervises those activities on site, must hold a subcategory CD5 certificate, whose renewal has required accredited continuing education activities since January 2025.
Verify both yourself: the ministry’s public register of permits and certificates issued gives the expiry date and the activities each holder is entitled to carry out.
Carpenter ants: the case that reaches the frame
Natural Resources Canada describes them as the largest destroyers of wood in North America. The ant does not eat the wood: it chews it away to hollow out a nest, often in damp building wood, and those galleries weaken the frame.
The targets the federal fact sheet names are precise: supporting members, veranda columns, sills, joists, beams, window frames, exterior trim. The sign to look for is not the ant, it is the pile of wood particles at the mouth of the galleries. Sound the suspect wood with a hammer: a dull noise means a nest. Nuptial flights run from May to the end of July, which explains the spring discovery.
That structural side is what brings carpenter ants into latent defect vocabulary. Article 1726 of the Code civil du Québec warrants the property against latent defects that render it unfit for the use for which it was intended, or that so diminish its usefulness that the buyer would not have paid so high a price. A defect is apparent, the same article adds, when a prudent and diligent buyer can discover it without resorting to an expert.
I cite no judgment here: the public case law databases refused me access while I was writing. What is left is the text of the article and the proof it demands: the extent of the galleries, their age, the link to moisture the seller knew about. The four conditions are in our article on the latent defect in Quebec.
The Asian lady beetles of October and the garage spiders appear on no official list: declare them anyway, but a nuisance with no trace and no damage rarely clears the seriousness threshold of article 1726.
Infestation found after the sale: the buyer’s recourses
The mandatory Déclarations du vendeur sur l’immeuble form, the seller’s declarations on the property, DV 00001 version V24 of June 2022, gives its section D6 to undesirable animals. It runs three lines.
- D6.1: has there ever been a presence of insects or undesirable animals inside the property?
- D6.1 a): which insects or which animals, with boxes for carpenter ants, mice, rats, bed bugs, bats and other.
- D6.1 b): did you use the services of a professional exterminator?
D6.1 asks whether there has ever been, not whether there still is: an infestation treated in 2019 gets declared all the same. Sub-question b) is the one people forget, even though the exterminator’s invoice dates the event better than a memory does. The details go in D15, with the number of the clause concerned.
After the sale, article 1739 leads. The buyer must give notice of the defect in writing within a reasonable time from its discovery, and the text is cut for a colony: where the defect appears gradually, the period runs from the day the buyer could suspect its seriousness and extent. Éducaloi places that period at six months to a year, exceptionally more if the defect shows itself seasonally.
Éducaloi adds the instruction that hurried buyers break: do not start the work at your own expense, because the seller must have the chance to verify the existence and seriousness of the defect, to see the damage and to repair it. Only urgent repairs escape the rule. You have three years from the discovery, not from the purchase date, to sue. The buyer’s guide lists the documents to demand.
A rented dwelling: the landlord’s obligation, and Laval’s deadlines
Article 1910 of the Code civil requires the lessor to deliver a dwelling in good habitable condition and to keep it that way for the whole lease, and the clause in which the tenant acknowledges that good condition is without effect. Article 1913 defines the dwelling unfit for habitation: one whose condition is a serious danger to the health or safety of the occupants. Article 1917 lets the tribunal declare it of its own motion and award punitive damages if the condition results from the lessor’s negligence.
JuridiQC, from the justice ministry, points out that everything starts with that distinction. To leave a dwelling that is unfit, the written notice must go out before you leave or within the ten days that follow. Reimbursement of an exterminator you paid for requires four cumulative conditions: having informed or tried to inform the owner before incurring the expense, an absence of action in due time, an urgent and necessary expense, a reasonable amount.
In Laval, the Code du logement L-12519, adopted on September 5, 2017, lists at its article 7 d) the pests covered, cockroaches, bed bugs, wasps and bees whose nest is inside, rats, mice and field mice, then sets deadlines few owners know about.
| Step | Who | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Report the presence of bed bugs | the tenant or the occupant | without delay |
| Report to the Service de l’environnement and hire a certified company | the owner | no more than 7 days after the notice |
| Carry out the extermination | the company hired | no sooner than 7 days, no later than 10 days after the mandate |
| Send the company’s name and the contract | the owner | no later than 7 days afterwards |
| Provide the inspection report the city requires | the owner | 15 days, failing which the city does it at the owner’s expense |
The company’s declaration must also carry the pest manager’s permit number and the exterminator’s certificate number. In Montreal, the Règlement sur la salubrité, l’entretien et la sécurité des logements requires the exterminator to declare every bed bug intervention within 5 days.
The obligation does not run one way. Éducaloi reported on March 24, 2026 two decisions of the Tribunal administratif du logement (Quebec’s rental board) with opposite outcomes. On March 14, 2025, cockroaches: the clutter kept the exterminator from working, lease terminated, eviction and about $1,500 to be paid to the owner. On May 6, 2025, bed bugs: close to $1,725 but the lease maintained, because the tenants had cooperated. Nobody can promise you a result, then. The landlord’s other obligations are in our guide to managing rental properties in Montreal and Laval.
Co-ownership and insurance: who pays in the end
In divided co-ownership, the question is not whether the syndicate must act, but how the bill gets split. Article 1039 entrusts it with the preservation of the immovable and the maintenance of the common portions, and article 1077 makes it liable for damage caused to the co-owners by a failure of that maintenance. But article 1064 brings the cost back to everyone: each co-owner contributes to the common expenses in proportion to the relative value of their fraction. A treatment paid for by the syndicate is a treatment paid for by the co-owners.
Insurance now, and the answer is disappointing. The guide Tout connaître sur l’assurance habitation, from the Bureau d’assurance du Canada (the insurance industry’s national association), gives its examples of exclusions: flood, landslide, earthquake, heating oil spill, illegally acquired property, criminal acts, war and terrorism, gradual damage. Vermin is not named in it.
No official source open while I was writing names vermin in a standard exclusion in Quebec. What I can observe is that “gradual damage” describes very exactly a colony that has been settled in for three years. The answer therefore lives in the wording of your own policy: ask your insurer for it in writing before the work starts.
Frequently asked questions
The inspector saw nothing and I found a nest two months later. Is he liable? Standard BNQ 3009-500 requires him to report the signs, but its appendix A excludes determining the presence or absence of vermin. The debate is therefore about whether visible signs existed on the day of the visit.
An exterminator says he needs no permit for a single family home. Is that right? No. The C5 permit provides no exception tied to the type of building, and the person applying the product must hold the CD5 certificate. Verify both in the environment ministry’s public register.
My tenant refuses to let the exterminator in. According to Éducaloi, the Tribunal administratif du logement can order him to give access, require him to declutter and prepare the dwelling, authorize urgent access, award damages and, where the breaches are serious, authorize the end of the lease.
To go further, read the latent defect in Quebec: the four conditions and your recourses and the seller’s declaration in Quebec: the DV 00001 form.
An infestation found before a listing, or during a promise to purchase, changes the strategy and not only the budget? Write to me. I help you document the situation and declare it correctly, in French, English or Arabic.
Georges Matar
Residential Real Estate Broker · RE/MAX DU CARTIER INC.
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